Curious Creature

Here is a great one.

I’ve been reading a lot of food-related books lately: Pollan, Kingsolver, etc. and the CNN story just makes me glad that I don’t eat beef.

Best quote:

Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer said his department has evidence that Westland did not routinely contact its veterinarian when cattle became non-ambulatory after passing inspection, violating health regulations.

(This one makes you feel good too):

Federal officials suspended operations at Westland/Hallmark after an undercover video surfaced showing crippled and sick animals being shoved with forklifts.

Watch the video for some real fun.

And this is the company providing meat to school lunch programs and the fast food industry. Man do we really need reform in the school lunch arena.

Children are just amazing. Via Andrew Sullivan here is a sampling of things children have written to the US troops in Iraq:

Andrew Sullivan

Back on November 12th I wrote about the desire to chronicle the journey my family is on while we move to a more sustainable life. I said I’d write the next day about where we were starting and what we were already doing to ease the burden we are placing on the planet. Well, I never made that post. Several months later I’m starting.

I think my wife and I are doing well so far. The choices we’ve made for upgrades to our house have been the best we could possibly afford, not unlike many other people, but I think for different reasons.

The Furnace Replacement

As an example when we had to choose a new furnace the first Fall that we lived in our current home we chose a 90%+ efficient furnace. I’ve talked to quite a few people since then and most, given the same choice, would have chosen the cheaper 80%+ efficient model because it was cheaper and there wouldn’t be enough of a return on the investment on the more expensive, but more efficient model. Simply put the dollars saved in energy bills wouldn’t be worth the difference in price.

In our case I chose the higher efficiency model because I think that, regardless of the money saved, it is my obligation to use less energy. I could afford the higher price and the natural resources saved was enough of a reason to make the purchase decision I did.

This is not to say that I think I am better than anyone else for having done so. I also believe that is is very important that people need to live within their means and not overstretch themselves. The lower-cost models are still far more efficient than what they would be replacing (in my case the furnace in this house was from the 1960s!) so in most cases any choice would be a win. Someone living within their means and watching what they consume is just as big of a win, if not a bigger one, for the planet.

The Windows

Another upgrade to the house we made was replacing all (well…mostly anyhow. The basement windows weren’t replaced.) of the windows on the first and second floor of the house. The old windows were the original windows from when the house was constructed in 1943. The glazing on most of them was in bad shape and they were single pane glass. They leaked air so badly that we always put the shrink-plastic over them in the winter and during really bad winds you’d see the plastic bowing out into the room every time a gust of wind came through (and the windows all had storm windows over them too.). The upstairs windows were simply just too dangerous.

They were all replace with the highest end vinyl window we could find. We got the low-e glass, argon gas filling, etc. Was vinyl the best choice from an environmental standpoint? Probably not but it was the trade-off we had to make. We couldn’t afford anything more expensive and the heat loss in winter that was cut down, plus the lower heat gain in the summer, were wins no matter how you look at it. There are no perfect choices in this type of situation but I think we made the right choice.

To be continued…

Ugh. I set myself a deadline of having my seed selection for this year’s garden done this weekend and I’m having a tough time. So many choices all of which are equally grabbing my attention. Call it analysis paralysis or whatever but damn is it hard to choose something. Am I making the perfect choice? Pretty dumb thing to think about actually because I suspect that all of the choices are good ones but I won’t have anything if I don’t do something soon.

I suppose this is a good problem to have

Wow. I really wanted to love Mediamonkey. Actually I do love Mediamonkey because it’s a damn fine piece of software. There are some warts like the fact that the newest version, 3.0, has a link to the Yahoo Podcast directory when that service was discontinued back in October of 2007. That is a minor thing though.

The biggest wart, and the reason I can’t use the software, is the iPod syncing. It “works” but there are glitches all of the time like artwork not being set properly for albums (I had Benny Goodman looking out at me from a Telemann piece for instance). The iPod “fast scroll” feature where you get the letter of the alphabet pop up when you are scanning quickly through the playlist doesn’t work right because for whatever reason when Mediamonkey syncs it isn’t making the iPod ignore “The” in band names. I get no indication that the iTunes-purchased song I just synced won’t actually play back on the iPod. It will play back just fine in Mediamonkey itself however.

So, even with all of the great features that Mediamonkey has, I’m heading back to iTunes simply because it works better with my iPod and that is just more important to me because my music collection isn’t big enough to bog down iTunes. If the Mediamonkey guys could fix that stuff I’d pay for it in a heartbeat but that day hasn’t arrived yet

Once again from Marion Nestle news of the Dutch economist study that shows that overweight people and people who smoke are less costly to society from a healthcare treatment standpoint. Shocker. Truly a shocker that people who die sooner cost less to the healthcare system

I found it funny that Marion made the obvious statement than economists only think about money. That should not be surprising. Economists never count the costs of things like disposing of all the crap we produce either.

Via the wonderful Marion Nestle we find that there is a bill trying to make its way through the Mississippi legislature to ban people who are overweight from restaurants by fining the establishment for serving them.

I would suspect this has a snowball’s chance in hell of passing but just the idea that someone thought this was a good idea is so preposterous. The issue is our food system and how completely out of whack it is and not overweight people eating at restaurants.

This kind of stuff is just so aggravating. We need reform of the food system as a whole to affect people’s health not pass stupid laws like this.

C’mon guys. Think out of the box just a bit.

We’ve had over 35 inches of snow so far this winter with 25+ days or so where it has snowed. I’m tired of it. I loved this stuff when I was a kid (which this reminds me of when we always had snow) but now that I have to shovel, etc. I’ve had it

We’ve had over 35 inches of snow so far this winter with 25+ days or so where it has snowed. I’m tired of it. I loved this stuff when I was a kid (which this reminds me of when we always had snow) but now that I have to shovel, etc. I’ve had it

Hard to believe it’s February 1st already. We just had a pretty big snowstorm and with all of the white stuff on the ground (and everywhere else for that matter) outside and the muscles aching from shoveling said white stuff it is odd in a way to start thinking about the garden.

This is the first year I’m planning on really starting early by starting my own seeds indoors, etc. I suppose I really started last summer when I covered a big section of my back lawn with thick black plastic sheeting to kill off the grass and weeds for a new vegetable garden section. I never have started planning anything in winter though.

My usual routine is to visit one of the good local garden centers sometime in May and pick up my already-started stuff there but this year I want a better selection so the best bet is to do the starting myself and now is the time to start making those choices.

It’s funny because in my travels around the blogosphere I’ve heard people refer to seed catalogs as “vegetable pornography” and never quite got it until I received my own copy of the Cook’s Garden catalog in the mail. Striking colors, fantastic photography, wonderful combinations, loads and loads of choices. It really is mind-boggling and, well, almost pornographic.

So in the next couple of weeks we’ll make the seed choices and order and see where we go from there. I certainly am looking forward to the garden this year. Nothing quite like fresh veggies picked right from your own piece of land.